I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Friday, November 4, 2011

Kill of the Week: Greed

Normally, I wouldn't use one of my own kills, but this was a nice "teaching moment". Wednesday evening, Rote was running a pretty standard Drake-range shield BC gang through southern Syndicate when our scout got us partial intel on a armor HAC gang, including a Vigilant, along our path of advance. Vigilants, as I mentioned a few days ago, are quite expensive ships. A Vigilant kill alone would have paid for a good portion of our fleet, so we changed course to see if we could get into a fight with him and his buddies. Our scout put the enemy fleet's numbers at a bit bigger than us: perhaps 20 or 25 to our 15... quite good odds for Rote Kapelle, in other words, even if we were in generi-ships.

Our scout initially reported three Guardians in the enemy gang before being forced off the gate that they had set up against us in VV-VCR. As a result, our partial intel remained partial, but we felt pretty good about our ability to drive off or neutralize three Guardians. We therefore obligingly jumped into them... to discover a SEDITION gang that soon had six Guardians, not three. This was an excellent job of hiding their logis, and congrats to SEDITION on accomplishing that! We decided quick that we didn't have the DPS to break the reps of six Guardians, so we burned out of their minimal tackle and most of us warped off with the loss of four ships and no kills (ignore the Zealot for a moment).

We safed up, kept an eye out for probes, and waited for their gang to move on, which they soon enough did. Our scout continued to keep eyes on them as they jumped next door into M2-CF1. Their gang aligned away, and then moved on... except for a single Muninn. "What's he doing?" our FC asked. "Looks like he's looting some wrecks here," the scout reported. We had spotted the last remains of another fight in M2 ourselves as we came into VV. "Is he on the gate or off the gate?" the FC asked. "Off," the scout reported. "Well off."

In my very very basic PvP 101 class, one of the things that I teach is that a fleet is at its most vulnerable after you've won a fight. Your enemy are pissed off, close by, know exactly what you have, and almost certainly have eyes on you. "Don't get separated from the rest of the fleet. Being alone is a bad thing," my notes say about this phase, and when I teach the class, I riff on this concept for a good minute or so, because it's important. This Muninn was about to learn that lesson the hard way. "How long is the warp in the next system?" the FC asked. "60 AU," the scout replied. "Get tackle," the FC ordered the scout.

And once that was done, the rest of us warped to M2, jumped in, and ended him. Turns out he had two Salvagers fitted and was salvaging wrecks, not looting them. His greed got him killed. His fleet-mates warped back to him as quickly as they could, and they arrived just in time to see him explode and all of us warping off to the point we were pre-aligned to. We again safed up, this time in M2, and again waited for them to move on.

This they eventually did, again leaving behind a straggler, this time a Zealot. He found us on the VV gate, preparing to continue our roam. About two thirds of us grabbed him and proceeded to rape face. He managed to reach the gate in deep armor, jumped into VV itself, and died there to the remaining third.

So in this way, and because of greed, a clear SEDITION victory was badly muddied by the loss of two expensive HACs. A fleet is at its most vulnerable after it's won a fight. Don't get greedy and don't get separated from your buddies.

I understood the "rape face" comment in the generic EVE lexicon sense Jester intended, but I have to admit to believing that if all the rape talk got stripped out of gamer lexicography (along with the phrase "die in a fire") we'd have a more pleasant, more inclusive, more fun gamer community.

I'm in TEST so there are more "r@p3face", "turbon!gg3rs", and "coathangerobortions" than you can shake a stick at, in my daily EVE experience. I personally find it hilarious and I'm married w/ kids (just got to remember keep those headphones on).

I think the phrase came out as weird on Jesters blog as he is normally so well written. It's kind of nice to see he plays in the gutter with the rest of us though.

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